


even with your hands around my throat

by WanderingCreep



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst, Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 20:16:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11744394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingCreep/pseuds/WanderingCreep
Summary: Seth snorts softly, rolling his eyes. “Even with your hands around my throat, I still miss you.”“I believe you mean’ adore me’. You wouldn’t still be trying to get in my good graces if you didn’t love me just a little,” says Dean.post august 7 episode of raw





	even with your hands around my throat

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't sleep, so here.

even with your hands around my throat

 

Dean Ambrose doesn’t half do things.

He’s not going to put someone through an obstacle course of mental puzzles and mind games. He isn’t one for hollow words, and if you punch him, he’s going to deck you right back, that’s just the rules.

He’s not like Seth Rollins.

When Seth pulls that bullshit in the ring, Dean already expects the thoughts going through his head a mile a minute. Maybe he shouldn’t have trusted anything that Seth was spouting; he’d always been a wordy little bastard, as good with spinning verbal webs as he was in the ring. Or maybe –and don’t get him wrong; he’d seen that Seth was making a conscious effort not to be a complete and total asshole, at least on camera and around Ambrose- maybe he was slipping back into his old ways without even realizing it.

That one was extremely wishful thinking probably. Everyone always credited Triple H and Stephanie McMahon for Seth’s turn to the dark side, but Dean knew well enough not to put the blame entirely on them. Seth chose that road, even if he was seriously coerced like a dying man in a desert. The Authority was his oasis, which only ended up being a trap once it was all said and done. But Dean didn’t blame the obvious evil entirely because Seth let himself be bought into that shit. He’d wanted it, no one had forced him into it. The only question was now, did he want redemption enough to level with Dean?

It obviously didn’t fucking matter now, because he had thrown any chance of that happening right out the window. Didn’t he try to do the exact same thing a couple of weeks ago? He’d held his fist out in the old Shield gesture after he and Ambrose had cleared house of the Miz and his little entourage. Of course, for obvious reasons like trust issues and still-fresh pain, Dean had denied the nostalgia trip that Seth was offering, took his ball, and went home.

Now, when he’d tried to show a little progression, Seth had turned him down. When were they going to stop this; trying to one-up each other, play hard to get? Eye for an eye? Is that what this was? He was getting sick of it, that was for certain.

But more than that Dean wants to wrap his hands around Seth’s throat and shake him, shake him and scream ‘ _what the hell is wrong with you_?’ until he either can’t scream anymore or Seth gives him an answer. Knowing Seth’s track record with giving out good explanations in a timely manner, Dean expects the former sooner than the latter.

He knows Seth probably got the fuck out of Dodge once he blew Dean off in the middle of the ring, so he isn’t expecting to get some answers out of him just yet. He expects him to be hiding out somewhere in the depths of the arena, where Dean won’t find him. But he can’t have gone too far; Dean was only a few minutes behind him.

By now though he should know that Seth exceeds expectations, always doing something to keep you on your toes. Dean should know that, and he shouldn’t be surprised when he gets back to the locker room to find Seth hunched over on the bench staring at the wall.

Dean blinks at him, like he can’t believe he’s really there, like he might disappear if he thought about it too much, and then Seth’s gaze slides over to him and he’s met with glassy eyes, and Dean just sees red.

He storms over, reaches out and grabs Seth by the front of his shirt and slams him into the lockers along the wall. The resounding clanging reaches out to an empty room –thankfully- most of the other wrestlers have headed back to the hotel or have raided the last of catering since the end of the show is quickly approaching, so no one is there. It’s just Dean and Seth and a whole lot of anger between the two of them.

“What the hell was that?” growls Dean. “Didn’t you pull that same shit two weeks ago? Why now can you suddenly not be bothered?”

Seth’s hands are at Dean’s wrists now, not pulling or pushing, just anchored there –probably a precaution knowing Dean; he might just try to strangle him.

“You don’t mean it,” Seth says. “I know you don’t.”

“Don’t mean what? That I won’t strangle you to death for lying to me again? ‘Cause I might actually do that. I’m just letting you try your damndest to sweet talk your way out of it, because at this point, you deserve everything that’s coming to you.”

“You don’t forgive me. You don’t even have to lie,” elaborates Seth, “because I know you. It doesn’t just take a little trip down memory lane to make you finally fucking forgive me. I told you I tried everything, everything I could think of, and then you pull this and suddenly everything’s okay between us?”

Dean doesn’t miss the way the roles are reversed.

Seth narrows his eyes. “Don’t fucking patronize me. This is serious.”

Dean barks out a laugh, because, _wow_ , that’s rich. “Are you for real? You got a weird way of getting your rocks off. You want me to hit you and all this shit, try to put yourself through all this crazy stuff just to get me to trust you again, but when I actually consider it for a change, you back out because you weren’t expecting it?” Dean’s face contorts into a snarl again, the hysterics finally passing.

“As to be expected from the fucking Architect. Not everything goes according to plan, dipshit. And you should know by now that I’m not the status quo, okay? I do what I want, when I want, and you don’t get to tell me otherwise. What, you work so hard to get me to like you again and then just throw that all away because I didn’t do it the way you wanted me to? Get over yourself.”

“Then why do it?” hisses Seth. “Why, after fighting me so hard for all this time, was that the moment you picked to trust me again? You said three years wasn’t enough, okay. I get that now. But why did you suddenly decide to go back on your word?”

Dean shakes him, and the thud against metal is like music to his fraying nerves. “I didn’t go back on my word. I’m not like you. I told you I wasn’t going to save you. I told you. I didn’t give you a neat little timeframe for earning back my trust, because that’s not something you can do. And with this little stunt you pulled tonight, I don’t think that’s ever going to be an option for you.”

“Then why?”

“ _Why did you_?”

A beat passes, full of tense silence and heated glares, and Dean has never felt more uncomfortable in his life than when he was waiting for an honest to god answer from a man who never gave him one in the first place. Maybe this wouldn’t be happening if Seth had just told him the truth from the beginning.

Then Seth sighs.

“I…didn’t want to get my hopes up,” he says tiredly. “I’ve been trying so long. For weeks, months, even, to get you notice. To realize that I was trying to earn your trust back. Everything I was doing was just so that you would see me and think that I was trying to be a better person than you last knew.” He gives Dean a half-hearted smile. “But I forgot how stubborn you are. So I worked myself to death trying to think of how I was going to get you to trust me again. And…yeah, it’s my fault for thinking it would be so easy.”

“Yeah,” says Dean- at least he isn’t screaming anymore. “You moved on, but you weren’t the one who needed to heal. You want me to move on at your speed, Seth. I can’t do that after the shit you put me through.”

“I know. But I didn’t get that till it was too late. So when you tried to give me the fist bump, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to force you to move on with you weren’t ready, because it wouldn’t mean anything to either of us. You’d still hate me, still wouldn’t trust me. So I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get my hopes up, thinking you’d actually forgiven me when you hadn’t.”  

Then he grins at Dean, in an obvious attempt at lightening the mood, says, “I’m not a masochist, despite popular opinion. I don’t like being miserable.”

Dean stares at him, brows drawn together. He can feel the anger slowly tiding as he drinks in Seth’s words, because was this actually the first time he’d gotten a real answer out of him? And even more so, there was truth to it, which was a double-shocker. Dean could admit to himself that he wasn’t quite ready to forgive Seth. He’d been more partial to the idea of being ready to take back some things that he’d said (but not all of them), but he wasn’t ready to trust Seth entirely. That was a deeper wound to be healed. Seth had come out to help him, despite Dean not doing the same, and though part of him still thought Seth had done it just to prove him wrong for the sake of making him look like a jerk, the other part genuinely hoped that he’d done it because he’d wanted to prove that he was really trying to make things work.

“You don’t get to decide if I’m ready or not. What if I’d meant it? Really meant it?” he says. He just has to know.

Seth looks him dead in the eye when he speaks, looking equal parts tired and wishful. “You would’ve made me work for it. It wouldn’t have been that easy if you’d meant it. Honestly, you probably just wanted me to shut up.”

“As usual,” says Dean without missing a beat.

Seth snorts softly, rolling his eyes. “Even with your hands around my throat, I still miss you.”

“I believe you mean’ adore me’. You wouldn’t still be trying to get in my good graces if you didn’t love me just a little,” says Dean.

“Yeah,” murmurs Seth. “But I miss you too.”

Dean sighs, finally breaking eye contact with Seth for a moment as he closes his eyes. “Why the fuck are you like this? You make me exhausted just looking at you.” When he looks back at him, he takes a deep breath and says, “You wanted to know why I did it? The fist bump.”

Seth nods.

“I wanted to give you credit where it was due. I said you wouldn’t do what I did for you, and you did. I thought you at least deserved points for trying, even if I still don’t believe that you don’t get yourself into these messes just so I can bail you out again.”

Seth narrows his eyes in confusion. “What? Why would I do that?”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you’re nor incapable of mind games like that.”

Seth opens his mouth, closes it, then grimaces. “Fair enough. But I want you to know that I wouldn’t go through all of this trouble to fuck up your head like that again.”

“That,” says Dean, “requires trust, and I’m not quite there yet. So until then, keep your ass out of trouble. I’m still not going to run out and save you every time you piss off the wrong people,” he let it rest unspoken that he still didn’t trust Seth not to have some ulterior motive, and instead continued, “And, seriously, what is it with you and trying to fight off hordes of guys nowadays? I thought you were supposed to be smart?”

Seth gives him a look. “It’s kind of hard not to want to beat someone up after arguing with _you_. You’re one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met.”

“Pot calling the kettle black. And you’ve got the gall to tell me not to pick the wrong battles. You hypocrite.”

The banter comes easily, almost like their choreography in the ring. It’s bittersweet though; Dean knows it will be a while before he can let himself truly enjoy it. Maybe he won’t reach that point for years, the way Seth’s broken him. He needs time to heal, and when he does, he knows things won’t be the way they once were. But he will heal, because he’s Dean fucking Ambrose, and he doesn’t die easily. It’s just going to take time.

And if he’s honest, he’s kind of eager to see what Seth’s going to do to help him get there.

 

 

 


End file.
